TSA’s Insensitivity Impedes Security, House Panel Says

By Jeff Plungis -
Sep 12, 2012

Eleven years after the terrorist
attacks that led to its creation, the U.S. Transportation
Security Administration must become a “leaner, smarter
organization,” Representative Mike Rogers said yesterday.

Rogers, an Alabama Republican who leads the House Homeland
Security subcommittee on transportation security, said TSA
should rely more on private companies to screen passengers for
possible terrorism threats.

“The agency has gone down a troubling path of
overspending, limiting private-sector engagement, and failing to
sufficiently protect passenger privacy,” Rogers said at a
hearing yesterday on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Rogers released a subcommittee report that said TSA is
bogged down in defending unpopular airport screening procedures
that may not match current threats.

The agency has been too reactive, imposing screening
procedures that respond to past terror plots while not doing
enough to anticipate the next threat, according to the report.
Once implemented, procedures aren’t revisited to ensure they
still make sense, the committee said.

“Eleven years after 9/11, the American people expect to
see tangible progress in transportation security, with effective
operations that respect both their privacy and their wallets,”
the committee report said. “The private sector is best suited
to this challenge, not the federal government.”

Increased Scrutiny

Yesterday’s report and hearing follow 22 other hearings, 15
lawmaker briefings and seven site visits by the subcommittee’s
members and staff since last year. The agency has been subjected
to increased scrutiny as some efforts, such as pat-downs and the
addition of screening machines that produced detailed images of
travelers under their clothes, provoked consumer outrage.

The TSA is committed to working with industry and regularly
seeks advice on policy from airlines, airports and travelers,
among others, John Halinski, the agency’s deputy administrator,
told lawmakers at the hearing.

“As the memories of 9/11 slip by for many, we at TSA
cannot afford to forget what our job is,” Halinski said. “We
cannot be distracted by critics and others who forget we face a
threat.”

The agency replaced guards hired by airlines with federal
employees after Sept. 11 to to reassure the public that each
passenger and each bag would be screened, said Texas
Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, the panel’s senior Democrat.

“I do not want us to be lax on procedures that have
provided a safe passage for billions of travelers since 9/11,”
Jackson Lee said.

Explaining Pat-Downs

TSA hasn’t adequately explained why it is using invasive
pat-downs, the committee’s report said. Americans would be more
supportive of the agency’s practices if they understood why TSA
was implementing a policy or what threat it was addressing, it
said.

“Pat-downs have hit a nerve with the general public, and
TSA has failed to adequately explain why it continues to use
this procedure two years after its initial rollout,” the
committee said.

Many of the TSA’s problems are self-inflicted, and result
from the strains of managing its bureaucracy and multibillion-
dollar technology contracts, the committee said. It said that
after spending $29.6 million on 207 explosive-detecting
“puffer” machines in 2006, the agency found the machines
wouldn’t work in dirty, humid airport environments. The machines
were ultimately removed and destroyed.

Passenger Traffic

The TSA’s workforce has grown as airline passenger traffic
has fallen, the committee said.

“A private-sector entity in the face of a shrinking
customer base usually must downsize,” the committee said.
“TSA, by contrast, has continually grown its ranks despite
fewer travelers.”

The TSA’s costs per passenger have been rising rapidly,
said Geoff Freeman, chief operating officer of the U.S. Travel
Association, a Washington-based trade group for tourism agencies
and providers. The agency’s budget increased 68 percent from
2004 to 2011, while the number of passengers was little changed,
Freeman said.

With passenger levels expected to double over the next 20
years, TSA needs to balance security with moving travelers
through the airport more efficiently, Freeman said. Millions of
people avoid travel because of time-consuming, frustrating
checkpoints, he said.

“The real threat of terrorism, the economic consequences
of inefficient screening, and increase in screening costs, add
up to create one of the biggest problems facing the travel
industry today,” Freeman said.